Fastener-driving tools, which may be pneumatically powered or combustion-powered, are used widely for driving fasteners of a type having an elongate shank with a pointed end and a head. Typically, such fasteners are designed to be forcibly driven through a workpiece, into a substrate. Such fasteners include nails designed to be forcibly driven into wood and drive pins designed to be forcibly driven into concrete or masonry. Typically, in such a drive pin, the shank has a portion flaring outwardly where the shank adjoins the head. An exemplary use of such drive pins is for attaching metal channels, which are used to mount plasterboard walls, or other metal workpieces to concrete substrates.
Many fastener-driving tools require such fasteners to be fed in strips, in which the fasteners are collated, through magazines having mechanisms for feeding the strips of collated fasteners. Commonly, such fasteners are collated via carriers molded from polymeric materials, such as polypropylene, with individual sleeves, bushings, or holders for the respective fasteners and with frangible bridges between successive sleeves, bushings or holders. Examples of such fasteners collated via such carriers are disclosed in Haytayan U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,927,459, 3,954,176, and 4,106,618, in Whitledge U.S. Pat. No. 4,718,551, and in Steffen et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,932,821.
This invention is addressed to providing improvements in a strip of collated fasteners of the type noted above wherein the strip comprises a carrier molded from a polymeric material.